The Turner Foundation, known for its support of environmental non-profits, is the lead investor in Future Energy Resources Corporation, a company working to commercialize a gasification process that generates electricity from biomass products.
Considered by many to be a significant technological advance, it is the first process that can use a wide range of feedstocks including grasses, agricultural waste, wood products and municipal waste. The resulting gas can be used for electricity and transportation; it provides renewable energy at an economical price with low emissions. It also provides an important revenue source for farmers. Farmers can market waste that was previously a burden, and plant grasses such as switchgrass that are valuable for crop rotation and to restore eroded land.
The first-of-its-kind commercial scale gasifier mixes biomass products with sand and heats them to 1800 degrees Fahrenheit, transforming carbon, hydrogen and oxygen to combustible gases. The technology holds the promise of allowing bioenergy plants to compete with fossil fuels.
The U.S. Department of Energy provided $27 million to FERCO as a demonstration project at the Joseph C. McNeil Generating Station in Burlington, Vermont. The company was created in 1992 to commercialize a biomass gasification process developed by the Battelle Memorial Institute.
Source: Environmental News Service
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